9 fun 4th of July activities for Kids

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4th….with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.

~Erma Bombeck~

What is 4th of July to you?

I might not have childhood memories of 4th of July, because I moved here as an adult, but for me it means FAMILY TIME. Kids running around playing, water games, activities, lots of food, popsicles, red, white and blue, fire works, vacation time!!! I found this quote by Erma Bombeck online and I loved it…

“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4th, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.”

9 fun 4th of July activities for kids (and adults too)

In the light of these associations, me and the kiddos have been working on some crafts and activities in honor of the holiday. Following are some of our fun 4th of July activities for kids, including a FREE 4th of July quiz walk. Print it out and challenge your family to a quiz!

American flag ornament made from painted rocks and sticks
Cute red, white and blue round place mats for your table
Patriotic fabric garland
Glow in the dark fire-work bottles
Flower crown (Swedish style) for your hair
Tie dye patriotic T-shirts
Spray the beard off Uncle Sam
Patriotic quiz walk (Swedish style)
A good ol’ water balloon fight

1) American flag ornament made from painted rocks and sticks

Make a big size ornamental flag from rocks and sticks to place in your yard or on your porch to honor our flag.

First, go for a hike to look for appropriate rocks and sticks to use for this craft. We used medium sized rocks, but I guess it depends on where you’d like to place the “flag”. If you don’t have anywhere to collect rocks and sticks, you can of course buy them at a store.
Cut the sticks the correct length. I used a simple hand saw for this purpose.

Lay out all the pieces to make sure you have everything and that the sticks are the correct length.

Paint the rocks blue. Use a paint that works for outdoors. Make sure to cover the surface with a protecting cloth and wear old clothes:)

Paint the sticks white and red. We used primer to do this.

When the blue paint has dried on the rocks, start to paint white stars.

2) Cute red, white and blue round place mats for your table

These are place mats I have been making for my kids to put in their lunch bags. I found the store bought place mats were a bit boring, so I made my own design. You can choose whatever trim you like. I have tried different variations of bias tape, piping and lace. I find it fun to make seasonal ones (like this one for 4th of July and summer) the kids can use. See below for instructions on how to make these cute place mats.

Put two matching pieces of fabric right side facing up (facing down if you’re planning on sewing lace on the final edges). Using a big plate or tray, trace a circle on the fabric. Cut out, leaving about 1/4 inch seam allowance.

Sew the pieces together, using a sewing machine. If you are sewing the right sides facing inward, leave a small opening.
Turn right sides out through the small opening. Sew the opening closed.
Iron the place mat flat.

As a final touch, sew on the lace edge (or whatever edge you’ve chosen). This can be a little tricky. Mine is not perfect, because I’m no master seamstress:) However, the kids like the place mats and that’s what matters the most!

3) Patriotic fabric garland

When I saw these adorable, patrioticly colored fabrics at Walmart (!), I couldn’t resist. This is an easy to make garland made from fabrics, which you can reuse over and over again.

Start with making a “template” from card board, which you can use to trace the triangular shapes onto the different fabrics.
Fold fabric double with folded edge along top of flag and trace.

Cut out the shape.
Repeat to create the desired length of garland. Place flags in the order you wish and put a hemp cord through the top of each flag. Sew around the edges a couple of times, using a contrasting thread.

Iron the flags
Easy peasy, ready!

4) Glow in the dark fire-work bottles

I found this idea on Pinterest and really liked it. All you need to make them is: empty water bottles, water, baby or bath oil, glitter, food coloring and red, white and blue glow sticks. If you “activate” the glow stick in the water that’s mixed with oil, glitter and food coloring, the bottle appears to “glow” in the dark. It’s a really great activity because..

1) It will look even cooler when it’s darker outside and reminds of fire works.

2) It includes a bit of science too, for example why does the oil float on the water..? You can teach your kids about density.

3) AND they are super easy to make.

If you’re curious to see how this fun 4th of July activity for kids is made, visit Edventures with Kids. I found the idea there.

5) Flower crown (Swedish style) for your hair

According Swedish tradition the girls make flower crowns to put in their hair on midsummer night. In Sweden Midsummer is celebrated at the time of the summer solstice, which is the longest day and shortest night of the year. Real flowers are used for the crowns, as there usually is an abundance at this time of year.

This year I decided to make a flower crown “Americana”, using red, white and blue colors. Unfortunately in dry California there is no abundance of wild flowers, so plastic ones had to do.

These flower crowns are really simple to make. Gather a couple of nice lookin’ bows, flowers (preferably smaller sizes…I couldn’t find any small red flowers…), some thread and red, white and blue ribbon.
Cut the flowers into smaller strands.

Arrange the flowers nicely on the bow and wrap into place with matching colored thread. I used embroidery thread.
As a finishing touch you can wrap with ribbon and leave longer strands hanging from both ends of the bow.

We made this one a little differently. We only wrapped a blue ribbon on the hair bow and attached a big, red flower.

6) Tie dye patriotic T-shirts

While this is not exactly a new idea, it’s still alot of fun! Believe it or not, but we haven’t tried tie dyeing before.

To do this craft you’ll need:

plain, white shirts
tie dye colors (duh!)
thick rubber bands
plastic bags
soda ash (optional)
gloves
protective cloth
marbles (optional)

There are lots of nice tutorials online, but basically this is how we did it:

We bought cheap plain white tops at Walmart.
After washing the shirts, we soaked them for 20 minutes with “soda ash”. It’s supposed to “enhance the color”, not sure if it really did..
Choose a technique/design you like.
Mix the colors according package instructions.
COVER the work surface and wear gloves (“someone” did NOT and had blue fingers for a couple of days..)
Wring out the soda ash water, but don’t rinse the shirts. Now you can start with the actual tie dyeing.

Two of my children chose to use the “crumple” technique: basically crumple up the shirt and squirt lots of paint on it.

One of the girls tried the “spiral” method. You can use a fork for this. You place it anywhere on the shirt where you’d like the center of the spiral to be, then slowly spin it around until all of the shirt is collected in a tight spiral.
Put at least 4 thick rubber bands around the shirt to keep everything in place (see picture). Then squirt different colors in each “section”.

I didn’t even have a shirt for myself, but decided to try a slightly different technique on a white baking cloth.
First I gathered 2/3 of the cloth in an accordion shape. I put rubber bands every 2-3 inches or so.
For the remaining part of the cloth, I placed lots of flat bottomed marbles and secured tightly with small rubber bands.
Then I squirted red on the accordion part in stripes and blue color all over the top with the marbles.
This technique created red and white stripes and a blue part with white “star like” circles.

Now, put the shirt in a tightly closed plastic bag over night or according tie dye package instructions.

Rinse off all excess color in cold water before putting in washer.

This is how the “stars” turned out. Pretty cool, actually:)

The colors washed off a bit in the washer, BUT the kids still love their new shirts and will for sure wear them for the holiday!

7) Spray the beard off Uncle Sam

This is something we still need to try. I found it on Pinterest and loved it so much that I wanted to share.

Buy 2 spray bottles, fill with water and set on “jet spray”.
Make 2 “Uncle Sams” from card board.
Use shaving cream to make a beard.
Compete who will spray the beard off the fastest!

You can find the original idea on “Parenting the Principal” website.

8) Patriotic Quiz Walk (Swedish style)

The kids’ chance to challenge the adults! Who knows the most about the holiday?

Unless you’re Swedish, you might not know what a quiz walk is. It’s a set of 12 questions (general or within a certain subject, in this case 4th of July). There are 3 answering options; 1, x or 2, which you record on a slip you carry with you. The questions can be hung anywhere, but ususally you can use them to “get people out moving”, so they’d be hung along a nature path of some sorts. This is a really fun way to test your knowledge about a certain subject, but also to get some exercise in.

Here my kids are walking around, reading the first question of the quiz walk.

After printing out the questions, I put each one in a plastic file folder. That made it easy to hang without using pushpins on the trees. Obviously it also protects the questions, so you can use them next year again.

Read the question and mark the correct answer on your slip; 1, x or 2…

To make it easier and faster to correct the questions I recommend cutting them out like this on a slip. That way you can just lay it on top of the slip you’d like to correct to count the correct answers.
When you’re done walking, make sure you go through the questions and tell everyone the correct answers. So that you’ll learn the questions you didn’t know before:)

I’ve made it easy for you: Click the button below for a free printable quiz walk, including 12 patriotic questions and answering slips.

Patriotic Quiz Walk

9) A good ol’ water balloon fight

Not much to add to this really…except USE THE “BUNCH O BALLOONS”! If you haven’t tried them before -they’re great! Just attach to a faucet and fill up 30 (or something) balloons all at once -and they self-seal too!!! Watching them fill up with water is really COOL!

That’s our 9 fun 4th of July activities for kids! Party is over. Now it’s your turn. I wish you a FUN FAMILY TIME and HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!

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